Nor were the labor battles that kicked off the thirties within the existing democractic system. Neither, I suspect, were most of the struggles that advanced progress, freedom, or whatever you want to call it, in American history. Imho.
Although, to be honest, as I was driving to work this morning, I realized I probably overstated the case here. Thankfully, I provided myself with weasel words like "I suspect" and "Imho."
Women's suffrage and gay liberation, post-Stonewall, sprang to mind. Can't recall if America had any of those militant bloomer riots, or if that was just Britain.
Anyway, I was going to follow the King bio with Clayborne Carson's study of SNCC, but now I'm thinking I'll pick up Eric Foner's The Story of American Freedom based on a partial Comrade Samnell recommendation. IIRC, he never finished it.
Please explain to me how a mass movement of law-breaking is working "within and through the existing democratic system".
Asked and answered. The mass movement was acting within the existing system to effect change via the normal democratic process. Democracy isn't necessarily law-abiding; indeed, that's one of the whole purposes of the jury, to provide a check on reprehensible laws.
I'm not convinced that America is any more or less deranged then we were 50 or a 100 years ago. Old people talking about the good ol days do so through +1 rose colored glasses of nostalgia.
What we have now that we did not have then is a 24 hour news cycle that can turn local stories into a nationwide stories. They can run tragic events over and over...and at some point you just start thinking that America is a hot mess. We might be, but I do not think that the "depravity" is growing.
Compelling statistical evidence would change my mind if the sample pool is large enough.
A news reader/watcher might think that shark attacks are on the rise and have been for the last 5 years. It's just a rise in shark attack reporting as shark stories sell papers and add time. But the reality is yearly number of shark attacks are about the same they has even been. (as long as you don't count that year with the Sharknado)
-MD
Well, semantics I guess, but I would argue that if the Civil Rights Movement had acted "within the existing system" they never would have progressed past the NAACP-led legal campaigns to civil disobedience and nonviolent (not always) resistance to the "normal democratic process" as represented, at the time, by both the Dixiecrats and the feet-dragging federal government.
I'm not convinced that America is any more or less deranged then we were 50 or a 100 years ago. Old people talking about the good ol days do so through +1 rose colored glasses of nostalgia.
Well the murder rate in most of the 1950s was about 5 per 100,000 people. For most of the 1990s, it was about double that. Go back 100 years, murder rates were up at 1990 levels.
You're right that people are looking through a rosy haze, and (more specifically), they're also looking at a much more socially stratified group "back when" (the murder rate in 1910 would be much higher in Hell's Kitchen than in the Main Line Philadelphia, but no one counted "them.")
Asked and answered. The mass movement was acting within the existing system to effect change via the normal democratic process. Democracy isn't necessarily law-abiding; indeed, that's one of the whole purposes of the jury, to provide a check on reprehensible laws.
Please explain to me how a mass movement of law-breaking is working "within and through the existing democratic system".
Democracy doesn't mean free speech, trial by jury and all that, its just majority rule.
Put judge Dredd back in the civil rights era. A black person eating at a white persons restaurant is breaking the law. Bullet to the head. Protesting without a permit, bullet to the head. Obstructing traffic, bullet to the head.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Judge Dredd sounds like a real douchebag.
In other news, I wonder if this is the world's first Godwin:
'We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal."'
Asked and answered. The mass movement was acting within the existing system to effect change via the normal democratic process. Democracy isn't necessarily law-abiding; indeed, that's one of the whole purposes of the jury, to provide a check on reprehensible laws.
Please explain to me how a mass movement of law-breaking is working "within and through the existing democratic system".
Democracy doesn't mean free speech, trial by jury and all that, its just majority rule.
Put judge Dredd back in the civil rights era. A black person eating at a white persons restaurant is breaking the law. Bullet to the head. Protesting without a permit, bullet to the head. Obstructing traffic, bullet to the head.
Incorrect Sentencing coupled with three counts of First Degree Murder. That's a one way trip to Titan for you, Ex-Judge Wolf.
In those situations, Dredd would be imposing cube time, not capital punishment. And if you've read the America! series, you'll also note that the Judges make no claim for democratic rule. Quite the opposite in fact.
heh. Cool. Incorrect sentencing and other abuses of the law ARE frowned upon in the series, but the system is not perfect.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Victimless CrimesI hesitate to speak for Citizen Thorn, but "victimless crimes" are usually considered to be: drug use, prostitution, gambling, until relatively recently, sodomy, stuff like that.I am kinda of curious...what are these victimless crimes?The comic shows insane, power mad judges on a regular basis.+1
Concentrating that much power is all but a guarantee of corruption and brutality on a massive scale.
In the real world, I believe the formula for improvement is to get rid of victim-less crimes and focus a much smaller enforcement, security, and prison-industrial apparatus on criminality with actual victims on a more localized level.
We have wasted literally trillions on stupidity that is supposed to make us look or feel safer while making the situation worse.
DA and Orthos have stated my position quite well. The "Proponents for reform" and self ownership sections are helpful as are the libertarian and minarchist pages. I personally reject objectivism.
Democracy doesn't mean free speech, trial by jury and all that, its just majority rule.
No, but "the existing democratic system" does mean all that. That's, in fact, exactly what it means. The US version of democracy doesn't even mean "majority rule", or senators would not exist and the president would be elected via popular vote instead of the electoral college.
Put judge Dredd back in the civil rights era.
But that's exactly what didn't happen, and that's exactly what "within and through the existing democratic system" means. Dealing with civil rights protestors didn't involve tearing down rule of law, eliminating the right to trial by jury, et cetera. A black person eating at a whites-only restaurant is breaking the law; he'd be arrested, processed, tried, convicted, and given a suitable punishment (under the existing system that prevented excessive fines or cruel and unusual punishments).
If you want to see what threats to the existing democratic system would look like, look at the system of military tribunals established during the US Civil War (and the unilateral suspension of habeas corpus). Look at the way the Constitution itself was substantially rewritten during the Reconstruction period. You can, if you like, look at the more modern catalog of abuses in the wake of 9/11.
Alternatively, you can look at how countries respond when the systems are threatened -- Mexico, for example, has had something like six constitutions in the past 200 years. As far as I can tell, nothing systemic changed in the United States during the civil rights era. There weren't even any rights-related changes to the Constitution outside of the abolition of poll tax.
Dealing with civil rights protestors didn't involve tearing down rule of law, eliminating the right to trial by jury, et cetera
Jonathan Daniels--Murdered by a Special Deputy
Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman--Murdered by members of the Klan, the Neshoba County's Sherrif Office and the Philadelphia, Mississippi Police Department
Viola Liuzzo--Murdered by four Klansmen, including FBI informant Gary Rowe
Civil rights-era killings yield secrets to FBI probe Not all a propos, but enough to be worth posting.
---
The Constitution didn't need to be altered because the Southern systems of Jim Crow, black disenfranchisment and Klan/police terror weren't codified in that document. I know that "systemic" means pertaining to the whole and not localized. In that case, no, nothing systemic changed in the United States during the Civil Rights Era, as MLK was to painfully learn when he visited Cicero, Illinois. However, quite a bit of systemic change occured in the South.
That change was brought about by a mass movement of civil disobedience and (mostly) nonviolent resistance and more than a few riots/violent rebellions. The Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations had to be cajoled, pleaded with and internationally embarassed before they would lift a finger to help the Civil Rights movement. You can make the argument that that is part of working "within the normal democratic process," but none of the articles that I read today on civil disobedience--discussions of Thoreau, Gandhi, MLK, John Rawls, the American legal system, etc.--seem to agree.
And what do you mean by the Constitution was "substantially rewritten" during Reconstruction? I thought they just added three amendments to it.
Backfromthedeadguy--Sorry to hijack your Judge Dredd thread, but there's been a dearth of good politroll topics on these boards. No Syria thead? No 50th anniversay of the March on Washington thread? Well, at least we can kind of talk about something kind of like that here.
If I got a briefcase full of cash I done found........
HELLLLLLLL Now.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Backfromthedeadguy--Sorry to hijack your Judge Dredd thread, but there's been a dearth of good politroll topics on these boards. No Syria thead? No 50th anniversay of the March on Washington thread? Well, at least we can kind of talk about something kind of like that here.
Although you can, you know...start your own threads...
just saying...
Incorrect Sentencing coupled with three counts of First Degree Murder. That's a one way trip to Titan for you, Ex-Judge Wolf.
You don't think thats the sentence alabama WANTED to put on the books? And would have with a judge system?
Dealing with civil rights protestors didn't involve tearing down rule of law, eliminating the right to trial by jury, et ceteraJonathan Daniels--Murdered by a Special Deputy
Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman--Murdered by members of the Klan, the Neshoba County's Sherrif Office and the Philadelphia, Mississippi Police Department
Viola Liuzzo--Murdered by four Klansmen, including FBI informant Gary Rowe
Civil rights-era killings yield secrets to FBI probe Not all a propos, but enough to be worth posting.
---
The Constitution didn't need to be altered because the Southern systems of Jim Crow, black disenfranchisment and Klan/police terror weren't codified in that document. I know that "systemic" means pertaining to the whole and not localized. In that case, no, nothing systemic changed in the United States during the Civil Rights Era, as MLK was to painfully learn when he visited Cicero, Illinois. However, quite a bit of systemic change occured in the South.
That change was brought about by a mass movement of civil disobedience and (mostly) nonviolent resistance and more than a few riots/violent rebellions. The Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations had to be cajoled, pleaded with and internationally embarassed before they would lift a finger to help the Civil Rights movement. You can make the argument that that is part of working...
I would more argue that the officers in these cases were a part of the klan.
Backfromthedeadguy--Sorry to hijack your Judge Dredd thread, but there's been a dearth of good politroll topics on these boards. No Syria thead? No 50th anniversay of the March on Washington thread? Well, at least we can kind of talk about something kind of like that here.Although you can, you know...start your own threads...
just saying...
Long experience from the pre-Hide Thread days has conditioned me to not start my own politroll threads and just piggyback off of others.
I would more argue that the officers in these cases were a part of the klan.
I would argue that Klan/police collusion/cross-membership was a defining feature of the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow South.